


Bleeding Lights

by HoneyBeeez



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Airplanes!!, Circles. Circles EVERYWHERE, Funerals, Kisses, Kyoutani is Adopted, M/M, Yahaba actually cares but he doesn't want to show it, Yahaba also grew up listening to Bon Jovi, theres a death but NOT of an important character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 20:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12689787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneyBeeez/pseuds/HoneyBeeez
Summary: Kyoutani travels across prefectures for unprecedented reasons and Yahaba happens to show up on his return. But this never happened, right?





	Bleeding Lights

**Author's Note:**

> So the first half I wrote while ACTUALLY flying (I was heading back home for the weekend and HAD TO try and describe of take-off/landing feels like) and the second half I wrote in a sleep-deprived, I-don't-want-to-work-on-anything state. So. Enjoy!
> 
> Also, you know that thing where you realize that you're writing in the wrong tense? I DID THAT, but later found out that it was the right tense all along. RIP.

He scored himself a window seat, which doesn’t really seem like it matters because it’s already pitch-black outside, but he appreciates the view over the left wing of the plane regardless.

The plane steadily guides itself down the runway and, when cleared, roars its engines and rockets forward. He steels himself as he watches the plane lift away from the ground and steadily climb higher and higher into the air. The view wasn’t black anymore, instead the surrounding city brightening the ground with multicolored lights. _Like a million constellations_ , he thinks fleetingly, his stomach and heart being drawn downwards, gravity battling for his body and losing to the hulking mass of metal. He notes the wing is slanted, the only explanation he could think of being that the plane was turning, and relishes the pressure that builds in his ears.

The plane lurches, then levels, the city lights far below them now, looking even more like jewels on an inky black canvas, spread apart in organized chaos, trickling outwards like vibrant water. He wishes his brain could have come up with something as poetic as this hours prior.

His stomach flips, his heart constricting in his chest, and he thinks it’s not just because of the rising altitude.

The pilot mumbles something over the crackling intercom. A group of giggling girls start talking obnoxiously loud about some tabloid or another. A baby whines. His stomach, lungs, and head no longer feel like they were tethered to the floor, so he sits up and cracks his back, already impatient. The bleeding lights help.

Kyoutani’s flying back home from a funeral, his birth mother’s funeral, no less. Adopted by a well-off family at the age of four, he barely remembered the woman who created him, flashes of memories that may have well been distorted dreams the only image he had of her until today. A distant family member heard the news and emailed Kyoutani his birth mother’s obituary, as well as information about the funeral scrawled in the scant margins. A “Hope you are well” lived under the black-and-gray picture of a woman that he now knew to be his mother.

His parents, kind people with plenty of money to spare, teared up at the letter and insisted that Kyoutani at least showed up at the funeral despite not knowing her or if she would have even wanted him to attend.

But he was shipped off anyways, a backpack stuffed with everything he needed for a weekend away, including his nicest clothes fit for mourning.

The funeral was open-casket, his birth mother’s face carefully covered in makeup to exude the illusion of life, her lips in pressed in a harsh line and her eyes closed almost peacefully had it not been for the crow’s feet wrinkling their corners.

Kyoutani takes a breath, air slipping in ruggedly through his lips, and he’s thankful that the rumble of the engines drowns out the pathetic noise. The lights orient themselves into neat, self-defining squares beneath them, the edges distinct neat roads and the ink-black patches in between a mystery.

He shouldn’t have looked at the body for as long as he did, but he kept finding similarities that linked her to him; the curly mouse-brown hair that fell to her shoulders, the same shade as his, the delicate curve of her nose matched his own. A hand touched his shoulder, and Kyoutani flinched reflexively.

And that’s where the awkwardness began. Loved ones came and tried to sympathize with him, and he was too straight-forward to lie, or maybe too stupid to say anything other than, “I barely knew her, she gave me up a long time ago.” The disappointment mixed into tear-rimmed eyes was too much for him.

Clouds intercept the lights, shielding them from view, smudging their brightness until they coalesced into hulking masses of light gray against the pitch.

It’s not long until he spots the wing angle downward, the lights and clouds and his center of gravity shifting with it, and then they’re descending into a different plume of lights, hitting the ground once more with a reverberating jolt.

Getting off is a scramble that he should have been used to, people shuffling into the aisles and pushing to get through. Kyoutani waits, glare fixed on his face along with the bags under his eyes and backpack slung over his shoulder. He nods roughly at the flight attendants as he files out and they smile at the acknowledgment.

He fixes his eyes to the floor as he walks out, completely ignoring the people he flew alongside, stalking into the airport with ease, already mapping out which train he was going to take to get back home despite the late hour-

“Kyoutani?”

His head snaps to attention at the sound of his name, shocked at the prospects of anyone knowing him here. And then his eyes lock onto Yahaba, who’s standing near a cluster of chairs at his gate. There’s a phone in his hand and a backpack at his feet, and Kyoutani thinks he spent a while just sitting in the airport before he pushes the thought out of his mind.

“What’re you doing here?” Kyoutani asks, voice hoarse from hours spent silent. He tries to clear his throat but it’s not subtle.

“You’re blocking people,” Yahaba deflects, raising his chin just slightly, enough for Kyoutani to get the message. When he turns around, there’s people lined behind him, some moving out of his way brazenly, while others hover and wait for their chance to slip by. With another jerk of his head and a small smirk, Yahaba shifts away from the mouth of the gate, gathering his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. He shoots a look over his shoulder at Kyoutani and, with a small smirk, starts walking away. Without anywhere else to go, Kyoutani shuffles to catch up to him.

“Why are you here?” Kyoutani tries again, lower, suspicion and agitation ringing in his voice. Yahaba was here, at an airport in the middle of the night, and why would he be? For him? The though is absurd, but why else would he be there? It made no sense, it made _no sense_ , so why…?

“Oh, you know,” Yahaba voices airily, “I usually just spend time wandering around airports.”

“Stop fucking around-”

“Going through security is my favorite part. It’s an incredible system.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Of course it has nothing to do about you coming back just as the last train of the night leaves the station that’s ten minutes away. Not at all.”

That pulls Kyoutani up short.

“The last train leaves in thirty, you ass-”

“On weeknights. It’s technically Monday morning.” Yahaba is oddly resigned and amused at the same time. Thinking about it gives Kyoutani a headache.

“Why the fuck do _you_ care?” he spits, not ready to admit that Yahaba is right even though he clearly is.

“You’d have to sleep in the airport or something-”

“Could be worse.”

“Someone could try and rob you-”

“If you’re gonna lie, you should at least try to be more convincing.”

Yahaba stops then, and Kyoutani nearly walks right past him. There is a crease in his brow and a pouting quirk to his lips that makes him look like a petulant child. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his consciousness, his mind connects the disarray of the bleeding city lights, like a fully lit Christmas tree, and the expression, a kid who didn’t get the _right_ present.

“Someone told me you left for a funeral.” The pout is gone and is replaced with a concerned frown; the child is pleading for another present, a do-over. “I’m sorry for your-”

There’s only so much Kyoutani can take.

“I didn’t even know her. If you’re here because of pity, you might as well fuckin’ leave. _Now_.” He doesn’t realize he’s yelling, not until the last word slips through his lips in a snarl and leaves him heaving in every breath. There is the heaviness again, pooling in the pit of his stomach, rooting him in place, like the war between gravity and flight, though there is no fighting. His eyes unglaze themselves, focusing on the setter in front of him. There’s odd determination in the thin line of his lips and, suddenly, the heaviness dissipates. Yahaba makes no move to leave; the child was faking a smile after being told by a relative to be grateful; the plane has levelled off thousands of feet in the air.

“Someone also told me that I should drive you home,” Yahaba confesses. Realization dawns on Kyoutani then, eyes narrowing and taking a defensive step towards him.

“Iwaizumi.” There is no nod as confirmation, but he is the only one Kyoutani told. There’s no doubt.

“But I didn’t show up,” Yahaba says, making Kyoutani blink. “I fell asleep and forgot all about it. _You_ called your parents and they picked you up at the train station.”

An alibi. Blackness surrounded by lights, land parading as nothingness. Kyoutani understands. He shrugs his backpack a little higher on his shoulder and starts walking again. Yahaba’s footsteps match his easily.

“Why?” he asks nonchalantly, stepping onto the escalator that leads them down and out of the terminal.

“Something tells me the upperclassmen would be a little too smug if they knew, otherwise,” Yahaba is level as he stepped off the automated stairs, “don’t you think?”

“They’d be thrilled.”

“Which is why they’ll know nothing.”

“What they don’t know,” Kyoutani starts as they slide through the terminal’s exit into the harsh chill of night; Kyoutani inhales sharply, while Yahaba pays no mind and makes a beeline for the nearby parking lot, “won’t kill them,” he finishes, ignoring the way his teeth threaten to chatter.

“Neither will some cold weather,” Yahaba quips, and Kyoutani glares at him.

Ultimately, Kyoutani is terrified to sit shotgun as Yahaba drives, because he doesn’t trust anyone as far as he can throw them and, honestly, Kyoutani can’t throw anyone too far, but especially Yahaba. But it’ll have to do, since it’s his only escape out of the cold. What he doesn’t expect is the music that blares when Yahaba sets the car running. Kyoutani barks out a short laugh, and Yahaba scrambles to shut it off.

“Bon Jovi?” Kyoutani asks, incredulous, _You Give Love A Bad Name_ still slightly ringing in his ears.

“My parents were obsessed with that stuff,” Yahaba gripes, pulling out of the parking lot and easing onto the road. Kyoutani leans and turns it up louder. “Knock it off!”

“Focus on not killing us,” Kyoutani replies.

“That requires less distractions,” Yahaba says, decidedly shutting the radio off altogether.

The rest of the ride is mostly silent, but the awkwardness that Kyoutani expected isn’t filling the car like wet cement. It’s…. odd. There’s no other way to put it.

“So,” Yahaba starts, and Kyoutani tenses, “why’d you go if you didn’t know her?” There’s a moment of careful contemplation over the answer before he glances over at Yahaba.

“This never happened?” he asks, voice unexpectedly small.

“It’s all a vivid dream,” comes the snarky reassurance.

“She was my birth mom. She never tried to keep in touch, but some distant family always sent a birthday card or two.” Kyoutani glances out the window. “She died of alcohol poisoning. My parents thought it would be nice if I went when I heard and… I didn’t have a say.”

“You did,” Yahaba says, slowing down as they coast into a series of streets, “you just didn’t have the nerve to say anything.” Kyoutani opens his mouth to refute him, yell, scream, fight about _something_ , but Yahaba continues: “But I don’t blame you.”

All is still. The heaviness. The bleeding lights become clearer, like their lights focus into deliberate pinpoints.

“It must have been hard, but you went anyway. You’re… pretty brave, for a coward.”

The car stops, and Kyoutani’s almost shocked to see his house on the other side of the road.

“Thanks,” Kyoutani says, for what he doesn’t know, but he thinks the _for everything_ is implied. He moves to grab his backpack from where it sat at his feet.

“Kyoutani?” Said boy freezes. “This never happened?”

“Just a dream,” he replies.

“Good.”

Yahaba kisses him, slightly off-center, but its enough. The plane lands, as jarring as a stuttering heartbeat, and the heaviness dissipates once again. They’re on solid ground.

“Good,” Yahaba repeats as he pulls away, voice cracking. Kyoutani relishes in the discomposure.

Filing out of the car is a scramble, his bag tripping him up a couple times. When the door is finally closed behind him, Kyoutani glances through the window and meets Yahaba’s eyes. He nods, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, one of which still slightly warmer than the other.

Kyoutani doesn’t wait to see Yahaba’s reaction, instead turning and crossing the street, fishing for his house keys in his backpack. When he unlocks the front door and looks over his shoulder, Yahaba is gone but, like the bleeding lights, it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t there or that he didn’t help.


End file.
